


The Future In Your Hands

by Barkour



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Pre-Canon, Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-19
Updated: 2012-06-19
Packaged: 2017-11-08 03:36:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/438701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Barkour/pseuds/Barkour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With their first baby on the way, Tenzin is trying not to get his hopes up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Future In Your Hands

"Oh!" said Pema. She dropped the string of beads and off they went, tumbling across the bedspread in a wild run for the floor. "Oh, drat!"

Tenzin caught her as she lurched. "What is it? Are you all right?" His palm coasted over her rounded belly.

Pema smacked his other hand where it held her shoulder, to steady her; the sentiment was not appreciated. Her mouth was an exasperated curl, uncurling.

"I'm fine. Tenzin, I can sit up on my own. I'm pregnant, not—not dead. Now help me pick up these beads."

She struggled to get out from the bed, and Tenzin, quietly, helped untuck the bedspread from her legs and fold it down to her feet. As he had before, he cupped her ankles, one to each hand, and squeezed gently, massaging his fingers into the swollen joints. Pema sighed and stilled only a moment, long enough to brush her hand down his arm. With her other arm, she cradled her belly. It was a small, hard swell, and when she held it like so in the crook of her arm, her face tightened; her eyes closed, dark lashes like bruises on her round cheeks.

Tenzin left off her ankles and reached for her face. "Does it hurt?" He traced her jaw.

"Shhh," said Pema. Her eyelids fluttered. Tenzin stroked her cheekbone with his thumb and knew that fluttering inside him, too. He could carry her if he'd need to carry her. Even six months heavy with child, she was still light, still small. She wouldn't appreciate that, either.

"Should I call for the doctor?"

Her brow wrinkled. "Tenzin," she said warningly, then she made a soft, startled sound and her eyes flew open. They were green, and of course they were green, they had ever been green, but they were a green that was uniquely Pema, a dark green like an old and verdant forest come to root on Airbender Island. Slowly, she began to smile.

"I'm going to call the doctor," said Tenzin.

She caught him by the wrist as he made to rise. "It's only the baby," said Pema. She tugged on his arm, pulled him nearer so that she could place his hand on her belly. "She's moving."

His fingers spread beneath her hand. Her belly was thick and still; then, when he would have risen again and insisted she accompany him to the doctor's room, there was a movement.

Tenzin said, "Oh—" and he set his other hand upon her belly, too.

"She's _moving_ ," said Pema again. "Tenzin—she's really in there."

This was not a new sentiment nor a new revelation, yet it was one that seemed to creep up on them both time and again, well after her belly had begun to show. Another little kick. The baby _was_ there. A horrible, desperate hope rose in him again. He could not look away from the blue ink of the tattoos on his hands, resting upon Pema's belly.

Pema touched her fingertips to his cheek. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking," he said, slowly, the words strange in his mouth, "that I know how my father must have felt."

Her hand was warm on his face. Pema was always warm; at night, she sweated so they stuck together then complained that she was cold.

"She'll be an airbender," said Pema.

Tenzin did look up then, though it hurt, somehow, to look away from his hands on her belly, as if some contact to the baby had been lost in the movement. An old memory of his mother telling how his father would rub her belly and sing to each of the babies came up. He tried to recollect his thoughts.

"We—shouldn't get our hopes up," he said. "My brother and sister—before me—"

"She  _is_ an airbender," said Pema.

"How can you be certain?" he asked. "How can we be certain?"

She smiled again, shyly almost, her eyes crinkling, her shoulders arching. As if testing, she said, "A mother knows."

His face ached; he felt a smile, fought it out of long habit, then it came out anyway. Pema's brown hair was loose around her shoulders, and in the yellow light of the lamp by their bed, she gleamed as if burnished.

"We're having a baby," he told her.

"Yes," said Pema, "we are. Now please help me pick up the beads."

He laughed—he did not often laugh, and it pleased him that she made him do so—and as he rose, he bent to kiss her cheek. He straightened.

"Did you know my father liked to make jewelry?"

"He did?" Pema looked surprised. "I never knew."

"For my mother and the rest of the family," said Tenzin. He crouched and began picking beads up from the floor as Pema, leaning carefully forward, began to pick them out from the folded bedspread.

"I would have liked to have met him."

Tenzin offered up a handful of beads to her. "He would have been very happy to make you a necklace."

Pema smiled as she slung her legs out of bed and stood, stretching. "Maybe _you_ would be happy to make me a necklace."

"Perhaps I would at that," said Tenzin.

Pema stooped to kiss him. Her mouth was soft, and her hair, loose and very long, swept his face.

"I love you," he said into that little shadowed world that rested between them, cradled in her falling hair.

"I love you, too," Pema said, kissing his nose. "But I have to pee."

Tenzin made a face and turned from her, breaking through her hair. He flapped his hand at the door. "By all means, please, go."

She laughed. "I want to see all those beads on the bed by the time I get back."

"All accounted for," he called. Absently, he sat upon the pallet and hunted for the ball of string Pema had cut her length from earlier; this found, he spread the beads out in the sheets and, thinking of Aang sorting beads by the fire after Tenzin and Kya and Bumi were supposed to be in bed, he began to order them as he would string them for Pema.


End file.
